Despite having a small screen for an Android smartphone, at just 5in, it’s about the same size as a Samsung Galaxy S8 with its 5.8in display.
Photograph: Samuel Gibbs for the Guardian

Google’s smaller 5in Pixel 2 offers the same features of its bigger 6in sibling, but looks more like the second coming of the Nexus 5X from 2015.

The back of the Pixel 2 is nearly identical to the larger Pixel 2 XL – the same glass panel at the top, same textured “hybrid coating” on the aluminium body, same fingerprint sensor and rounded corners. This time the camera is placed to the right of the flash, not the left, and the matt grey Google logo replaces the shiny chrome one.

The 5in Google Pixel 2 on the left, the larger 6in Pixel 2 XL on the right. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs for the Guardian

It’s attractive from the back, but the front is much more bland and dated. Instead of a 6in 18:9 elongated screen that fills most of the device, the Pixel 2 has a 5in regular OLED display with large top and bottom bezels that house a set of stereo speakers. It’s a little disappointing, looking like a smartphone from 2015 – not a top-end phone from 2017.

The 1080p screen is of good quality with a decent colour range, but doesn’t look quite as good as Samsung’s best. Most will be perfectly happy with it.

Despite having a small screen for an Android smartphone, at just 5in, the phone is about the same size as a Samsung Galaxy S8 with its 5.8in display. The Pixel 2 is 69.7mm wide, 1.6mm wider than the Galaxy S8 and 2.4mm wider than the iPhone 8. It’s also 7.8mm thick compared to 7.3mm for the iPhone 8 and 8mm for the Galaxy S8, and it weighs 143g, 5g lighter than the iPhone 8 and 12g lighter than the Galaxy S8. You can’t really tell though.

The Pixel 2 is water resistant to IP67 standards (immersion to a depth of 1m) matching the iPhone 8, not the higher IP68 rating (1.5m depth) of the Galaxy S8.

The textured coating aids grip and feels durable, but some will not like that it doesn’t have the smooth finish of glass or uncoated metal.

More than a day’s battery life

Setting up the Pixel 2 from another Android phone or iPhone is easy using a cable and the included adapters. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs for the Guardian

The Pixel 2 has the same processor, storage and memory as the Pixel 2 XL and performs just as fast, making it one of the smoothest and consistent Android smartphones available.

Battery life was also good, lasting just over 28 hours between charges, a period in which I responded to hundreds of emails, messages and notifications, took some photographs, played a quick game, listened to around three hours of music and watched a 50-minute episode of Van Helsing downloaded from Netflix using Bluetooth headphones.

It took close to two hours to fully charge the Pixel 2, while standby battery life overnight wasn’t quite as good as the Pixel 2 XL in my testing, dropping around 5% overnight compared to just 1% battery.

Android Oreo

Squeeze the bottom half of the phone at the sides to launch Google Assistant. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs for the Guardian

Like the Pixel 2 XL, the Pixel 2 is one of the first smartphones to run the latest version of Android 8 Oreo, which feels polished and well optimised with smooth animations and snappy response all round.

There’s also tight integration of Google Assistant, including squeezable sides on the phone to fire it up, and a new permanent widget on the homescreen that is designed to put Google’s smarts front and centre.

The Now Playing feature recognises music playing around you using local machine learning and a database, meaning it works offline — no internet connection required. It works well. Google’s new Lens feature recognises objects in photos, identifying landmarks, media and art, and giving users more information on even relatively obscure local monuments.

Camera

The HDR+ system of the Google Camera app produces some brilliant images. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs for the Guardian

Both the front and rear cameras are the same on the Pixel 2 as they are on the bigger Pixel 2 XL. The 12.2-megapixel camera on the Pixel 2 is fantastic. Google’s HDR+ processing produces some of the most detail-rich, well balanced photos of any smartphone, and makes it difficult to capture a bad photo.

Observations

The Now Playing feature recognises music in the background and pops up a little notification on the ambient screen. All AI magic performed locally, not on Google’s servers. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs for the Guardian

The Pixel 2 did not exhibit any clicking or whining noises during the test period, as some users have reported

Stereo front-facing speakers are loud and clear, but aren’t capable of really filling a room

Unlimited photo and video backup through Google Photos is included in the price

The lack of a headphone socket is disappointing, even if there’s a USB-C to 3.5mm adapter in the box

Price

The Pixel 2 costs £629 with 64GB of storage or £729 with 128GB of storage and are exclusive to EE, Carphone Warehouse and the Google Store in the UK. For comparison, the 5.8in Samsung Galaxy S8 with 64GB costs under £540 (£689 at launch), the 5.5in OnePlus 5 with 64GB costs £449 and the 4.7in iPhone 8 with 64GB costs £699. Apple’s upcoming 5.8in iPhone X with 64GB of storage will cost £999.